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One of the best films I have ever seen is a 2006 German drama titled, “Das Leben der Anderen” – or, in English, “The Lives of Others.”

It’s a spy film, but in every way an unconventional one. Essentially it depicts life in East Germany under Communism, where everyone seemed to be spying on everyone else – especially but not exclusively the Stasi, or East German secret police. It reveals subtly and sensitively how the personal and political, the social and sexual can get inextricably entwined when listening in on the lives of others is the rule, not the exception.

Nearly a quarter century has passed since the fall of the (Berlin) wall, since communism collapsed and East Germany with it. But even today not a single German of a certain age – whether born in East Germany or West – has forgotten what life was like in East Germany when it was a Soviet satellite.

So when German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls President Barack Obama to complain that her cell phone was tapped, her private line, she is not only expressing disgruntlement at the digital invasion. She is bringing to the conversation a lifetime of learning how oppressive is the extreme violation of personal privacy by a political entity.

Merkel was born in East Germany when it was still under Communist rule. So she knows from experience how fine the line between spying as absolutely necessary to state security, and spying as a habit gone haywire.

One month ago a group of Saudi women activists declared that on October 26, 2013 was going to be a protest against the ban on women who drive. This will not be the first such action. In the 23 years that have passed since the original similar Saudi protest have been a number of others, the most recent just two years ago.

So the question is whether this time anything will be different. No doubt that this is the most technologically savvy of the various pro-women driving protests. Campaigners have posted protest information on Twitter and Facebook, and they’ve developed a slick website. Moreover their petition demanding that the government issue them driver’s licenses has gathered well over 17,000 signatures.

But if you think that the government has been cowed, think again. Officials have blocked the activists’ website. Ridiculing them online has become commonplace. Conservative clerics have attacked the “conspiracy of women driving.” Saudi officials have warned even online supporters, saying that cyber-laws banning political dissent would be enforced in this case. (Conviction can bring a prison sentence of up to five years.) And Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry spokesman declared that “All violations will be dealt with – whether demonstrations or women driving. Not just on the 26th – before and after, at all times.”

This is a classic case of authoritarian leaders resisting increasingly restive followers. In such a circumstance the authorities have no choice but to threaten punishment, lest the protest get out of hand. How this particular day of protest will come out remains obviously to be seen. But what we do know now is this. First, it is highly unlikely that in the short term change will be created. Second, it is inconceivable that over the long term Saudi women will be denied a right that women elsewhere in the world take for granted – the ordinary, quotidian right to plant themselves behind the wheel of a car.

I’ve got no time now to blog.

But, if I did have time to blog, this is what I would blog about.

• Edward Snowden’s recent interview, in which he sounds so sensible and so smart it’s hard to imagine him all that odd or, for that matter, criminally culpable. Snowden: “So long as there’s broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program…. However programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that’s a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of ‘government in the dark,’ where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public output.” (New York Times, 10/18/13.)

• Or I would blog about how animal rights activists are upping the ante on minks. In a series of raids on mink farms, they’ve freed, or liberated if you prefer, nearly 8,000 minks, just since last July.

• Or I would blog about how Putin and his cronies clearly concluded that they had better not slap government opposition leader Aleksei Navalny in jail – and thereby risk widespread public protest. Instead, last week, an appellate judge simply suspended Navalny’s five year sentence.

• Or I would blog about how humbling a week it’s been for Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan Chase), and Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs), and Steven A. Cohen (fabulously wealthy owner, putative guru, and driving force behind the hedge fund, SAC Capital). Each of these men has been a hugely high flier. And each of these men has been cut down to size – sort of. Blankfein’s problems have been minor compared to Dimon’s and Cohen’s. Goldman had only to fess up to its worst quarterly result in fixed income since 2008. JPMorgan and SAC, on the other hand, could both be facing criminal charges – in addition to humungous fines.

• Or I would blog about how Anonymous (that nimble network of hacktivists) has once again reared its head, once again in a case of sexual assault, this time in Maryville, MO. The case resembles the one in Steubenville, OH, in which Anonymous played a similarly pivotal role, where two high school football players were ultimately convicted of raping a drunken girl at a party.

• Or I would blog about an Op Ed in yesterday’s Times, about Saudi Arabia. While not predicting imminent change, the piece did suggest that the Saudi royal family is not long for this world. The concluding sentence: “When the Gulf monarchies’ exceptionalism inevitably runs out of steam, and it will, their populations will be well placed to take their part in the bigger, region-wide shift in the political order that is happening at the expense of unaccountable repressive elites and in favor of a more vocal, politically conscious and better-connected youth.” Saudi Arabia’s decision just this week to reject a normally coveted seat on the United Nations Security Council – a decision that reportedly came down directly from the king – seems to confirm a decision making process that’s seriously sclerotic.

• Or I would blog about Stanley Druckenmiller, one of the most successful money managers of all time, and his quixotic, though high-minded and well-intentioned campaign to get the young to take on the old. Druckenmiller has been touring college campuses with a single, simple message aimed at his young and growing audiences: start a movement, demand equity. Demand equity between the young and the old, between your parents’ generation which is benefiting too handsomely from various entitlement programs, and your generation which, at this rate, is doomed to find that when it hits age 65 the government will have run out of money.

• Or I would blog about the recent government shutdown, which clearly, obviously, manifestly, was a crisis not of leadership – but of followership.

If I had the time to blog – which I do not.

I have this theory. I have this theory that the White House is secretly thrilled by the government shutdown and by the looming deadline for debt deal.

Why? Because Americans are being distracted from what otherwise would be their fixation: the disastrous launch of Obamacare. What a mess!

To be sure, the administration has time to fix what’s wrong. Most experts say it will be at least six months before we really begin to know how the Affordable Care Act will shake out. But what’s gone awry so far is head-scratching to the point of being badly embarrassing.

• Time: “Time Running Out for Obamacare Fixes”
• Politico: “”Problems with the Healthcare.gov sign-up site have been so massive that most people who try to enroll can’t get to step one.”
• Forbes: How Obamacare’s Exchanges Turned Into a ‘Third World Experience.’”
• New York Times: “From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal.”

No wonder Americans’ satisfaction with government has just dropped to a new low. No wonder only 18 percent of those polled last week by Gallup say they are satisfied with the way the nation is being governed. No wonder the White House is content at this moment to keep the attention on Congress – rather than on its own miserable management.

What made this government shutdown different from other government shutdowns is that this time – and here I quote the New York Times – “a small but powerful group of outspoken conservative hard-liners is leading its leaders.” Or, in my parlance, in recent weeks history has been made not by leaders, but by followers, by some twenty-five or so hard-core right wing Republicans so strong in their convictions and so tightly organized that they exercised power beyond their numbers.

Think of them as a band of revolutionaries, determined to overthrow the system as most of us understand it. Like real revolutionaries they seemed initially to be out in left field. Like real revolutionaries they think big not small. (No less than revoking a law that already was passed – the Affordable Care Act – was going to suffice.) Like real revolutionaries they threaten those who ostensibly are their allies (in this case John Boehner). Like real revolutionaries they are die hard ideologues. Which is why, like real revolutionaries, they prefer to go down fighting than consider any compromise.

The question then becomes, how is this particular revolutionary movement to be defeated? The answer? Like any other revolutionary movement or, at least, like any other revolutionary movement in a democracy as opposed to an autocracy. In autocracies (see Putin’s Russia) those in positions of power quash (by any means necessary) any individuals or groups that seem to them to be threatening. In democracies, however, such heavy-handed tactics are off the table. Whatever President Obama might think of his political enemies, he will not send them into exile, throw them in jail, or threaten their physical or financial well-being. So what has to happen in a democracy for a revolutionary movement to become irrelevant is for the silent majority to coalesce against it. Put directly, others, other stakeholders, have to care enough to start getting politically involved.

Continue Reading “Business as Usual? Not!”

In spite of its obvious importance, an item in the news this week went nearly unnoticed. It failed to get attention because the American media is consumed by American dysfunction. The government shutdown has sucked the air out of the room.

The fact that two Marine generals were in effect fired for incompetence – Taliban fighters breached a coalition air base under their command in southern Afghanistan, killing two Marines and destroying or damaging more than a dozen aircraft – is a very big deal. It’s a rare example of the U. S. military holding its highest officers to account for their performance on the job. Major General Charles Gurganus and Major General Gregg Sturdevant were relieved of their duties for failing to “take adequate force protection measures,” and for not exercising the “level of judgment expected of general officers.” In making his announcement, the commandant of the Marine Crops, General James Amos, said he had censured Sturdevant for depending too heavily on the British to protect the Americans (the air base was formally under British control). And that he had punished Gurganus because he was the one who “bore final accountability for the lives and equipment under his charge.”

In the wake of the Vietnam War, now widely regarded as lost, the American military was largely ignored or even demeaned. Americans were embarrassed less by it than by their own intervention in a war that was very high in cost and very low in benefit. More recently our attitudes have changed. In spite of widespread doubts about the virtue of American intervention both in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U. S. military has regained its previous position of honor in America’s collective consciousness. Whatever you might feel about the now ubiquitous line from American civilians to members of the Armed Forces – “Thank You for Your Service” – it is an attempt to extend respect.

But the deeper truth is that the American military is just like every other American institution – its leadership cadre is under attack. The most visible (and, some would say, risible) example was its most famous (and, some would say, most pompous) general, David Petraeus, feeling forced to quit his position as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency because of an extramarital affair. Not far behind is General Stanley McChrystal, who was pushed by the president to resign because of injudicious remarks made to a reporter for Rolling Stone. But these personal humiliations are chump change compared to the professional questioning to which America’s military command has recently been subjected.

Three recent books make my case. In “Invisible Armies” military historian Max Boot argues that, “unfortunately, our ignorance of guerrilla war runs deep, even as we find ourselves increasingly entangled in such conflicts” (Wall Street Journal, 1/13). In tellingly titled “Bleeding Talent,” and tellingly subtitled “How the U.S. Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why it’s Time for a Revolution,” military veteran Tim Kane claims that “in terms of attracting and training innovative leaders, the U. S. military is unparalleled. In terms of managing talent, the U. S. military is doing everything wrong.” And in “The Generals,” longtime military reporter Thomas Ricks points out that the way in which “the generals themselves are managed has fundamentally shifted since World War II” – and not for the better. Then they were held accountable. “Firing, like hiring, was simply one of the basic tasks of senior managers.” Now they are not. Now, with some very few exceptions, they are allowed to remain in place. For Ricks this raises several questions: “How and why did we lose the longstanding practice of relieving generals for failure? Why has accountability declined? And is it connected to the decline in the operational competence of American generals?”

There is no reason that military leaders should be exempt from assessment. This is not to suggest that they become targets of public rebuke. Rather it is to point out that the relief of Generals Gurganus and Sturdevant was completely in keeping with the reforms that Ricks properly proposed.

Though 80 percent of Americans say that threatening a government shutdown is an unacceptable way to negotiate, that’s exactly what’s happening in Washington. The president says he is unwilling to negotiate with Republican “extremists.” And Republicans are too busy fighting with each other even to notice whatever the rhetoric emanating from the White House.

The result is the American people held hostage to a government so hobbled it raises questions about democracy in the 21st century. And the result is the United States of America itself diminished by dysfunction that has transitioned from episodic to chronic.

If this were the first time that the president and the Congress had been unable to do the people’s work it would be one thing. But this has become a pattern – Ground Hog Day on steroids. Repeatedly we witness the spectacle of elected officials so mired in their own morass they are unable to do the right thing in anything resembling a civilized and timely manner. Too few in Washington are able to lead. Too few in Washington are willing to follow. Too many members of the governing class are atomized – unable to connect to compromise.

How different the picture at the international level! Right and left amazing things are happening! Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have become best friends forever. Bashir al-Assad is willing suddenly to surrender his arsenal of chemical weapons. The American president and the Iranian president are chatting on the phone. And the Israelis and Palestinians are engaging in continuing conversation.

How to explain this disconnect – the difference between being stuck in domestic affairs and, apparently, forging ahead in foreign affairs? Try this – self interest. It is not that the American president is a failure at home and a success abroad, that he cannot lead here but he can lead there. Rather it is that for a constellation of reasons there is in world affairs, for the moment at least, a coincidence of self interest. It is in Putin’s self interest to press his client, Assad, to get rid of his chemical weapons. It is in Assad’s self interest to go along with his patron, Putin. It is in Iran’s self interest to negotiate on its nuclear program in order to reduce the crippling sanctions against it. It is in the self interest of the Israelis and also the Palestinians to seem at least to be seriously negotiating under the watchful eye of Secretary of State John Kerry. And of course it is in Obama’s self interest to create a climate in which any one of these changes, not to speak of all of these changes, is, would be, a personal and political gift.

What I am arguing is that the difference between what is happening at home and what is happening abroad is more apparent than real. There is no more good leadership, or for that matter good followership, in foreign affairs than there is in domestic affairs. It is just that at the international level there happens to be, at this particular time, a coincidence of self interest. Putin’s self interest happens to coincide with Obama’s; Assad’s with Putin’s, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s with American president Barack Obama’s, and so on.

I will however admit that all this putative progress in international relations does raise an important question: why now? Is the coincidence of self interest merely coincidence? Or is there something in the ether that has enabled it, encouraged it? Mostly it is merely coincidence – but not entirely. The president of the United States deserves some credit for creating a context at the international level that has escaped him at the national level – one in which compromise is considered a game that under certain circumstances ends in a win-win. It is not necessarily, not always anyway, If I win you lose.

Her personal story is remarkable and her political triumph the more so. Angela Merkel has just led her party, Germany’s Christian Democrats, to its biggest victory in two decades. She could well be the first chancellor since Konrad Adenauer (in 1957) to not need a coalition partner in order to govern. She is only the third postwar chancellor (along with Adenaur and Helmut Kohl) to secure three successive election wins. And she has bucked the trend by become the only leader in the eurozone to be reelected since the eurocrisis (2010). By every measure she is a historic figure. And given the temper of the times – times in which democratically elected leaders the world over have a difficult time governing – her well-deserved victory yesterday is nothing short of striking.

Post World War II Germany is one of the greatest political and economic success stories ever. The country transformed itself – was transformed with considerable American help – from fascism to democracy with amazing alacrity. Not only was there within a generation scarcely a trace of the Nazism that had gripped the country between 1933 and 1945, democracy and also pacifism took such strong root that over a half century later they constitute an apparently enduring legacy.

After the collapse of communism, and then reunification, Germany became once again a powerhouse, without question the strongest country, politically and economically, in Europe. What’s been amazing for a student of leadership to watch is how this particular woman, Merkel, has led this particular country by downplaying her own strength in favor of a leadership style that seems in every way modest. In keeping with her own trajectory – she is the daughter of an East German pastor – her appearance is maternal, nondescript. Her manner of communicating is decidedly low key. Her way with a crowd is anything other than rousing. And she governs by consensus, not by command and control. She is pragmatic, plain, and even tempered. She is clear-headed and centrist. She has certain goals, but no one would ever describe her as visionary.

Europe is a continent and the euro is a currency both in need of help – help that Germany has turned out willing to provide, but only, apparently, reluctantly. Ironically, it is this apparent reluctance to lead – this leading in low gear – that has stood Merkel in such good stead. By seeming to lead only when she absolutely must, she has turned out to be the most powerful and successful leader in Europe, by far.

Barack Obama and John Boehner have morphed into mirror images. Right now neither one of them is able to rustle up followers sufficient in numbers to do what their leaders want and intend.

Barack Obama just gave in to his putative followers – in this case liberal Senate Democrats – who made clear their opposition to the appointment of Larry Summers as chair of the Federal Reserve. (Summers, knowing he was toast, withdrew his name from contention even before he was formally nominated.) And John Boehner just gave in to his putative followers – in this case conservative House Republicans – who made clear their opposition to an agreement on the federal budget without a resolution stripping funding for Obamacare.

The press jumped on its prey – leaders so obviously weakened that dissecting what happened was an impulse impossible to resist. Writing in Politico, a liberal rag generally sympathetic to the White House, John Harris and Todd Purdum asked, “What’s wrong with President Obama”? (9/18) They went on: “The president’s harried, serial about-faces on Syria – coupled with the collapse of Larry Summers’s candidacy for chairmanship of the Federal Reserve – have combined to highlight some enduring limitations of Obama’s approach to decision-making, public persuasion, and political management. Across the capital, anxious friends and chortling enemies alike are asking: What’s wrong with Obama?” In a similar tone, a piece in the New York Times put Boehner’s plight this way: “A rotating cast of characters – often back-bench newcomers whom few have heard of outside their districts, and who were elected on a Tea Party wave – has emerged to challenge Speaker John A. Boehner’s leadership at every turn.”

It happens that both Obama and Boehner are centrists – ideologically and temperamentally. They are much more comfortable in the middle than they are either at the one extreme (the left) or the other (the right). But they are being torn in different directions by those around them, who refuse to give even an inch in order to walk a mile.

I am no great fan of either man. They are leaders with obvious deficits. But neither one of them is a fool, and neither one of them is anything other than well-intentioned. The problem they face is the time in which they live. Obama and Boehner are being victimized by the mood of the moment, in which likely as not leaders are rendered hapless by followers refusing to follow.

On August 16, in a similarly titled blog, I wrote how strikingly powerless was the American president not only at the national level, but at the international level as well. “American power has waned dramatically even in recent years, which means that the White House, the State Department, and even the Pentagon are generally unable to bend either individuals or institutions to their will.” I added that the American foreign policy establishment has been slow to understand how radical the changes to which I referred – and that with presidential power and authority so severely depleted, the only arrow remaining in Obama’s quiver was influence.

Little did I know then what I know now: that one month later, on September 14, would be announced an agreement between the United States and Russia, calling for the destruction or removal of Syria’s chemical arsenal within nine months. I will leave it to history to render a verdict on the agreement. I will leave to experts on weapons to determine whether the agreement is even feasible. And I will leave it to those more knowledgeable in foreign affairs than I to decide if the agreement is in the national interest.

However so far as leaders and followers are concerned, I will weigh in. Some preliminary conclusions:

• The Kremlin should be celebrating. Never in a million years would anyone have predicted that from one week to the next Putin would be transformed from a national figure in evident decline, to an international superstar who the U.S. was hustling to the negotiating table. Here was the view from Moscow a week or so ago: the regime was weakening, the economy was suffering, Putin’s popularity was dropping, and the Olympics (to take place in Russia next year) were being threatened by human rights activists. Now everything is different. Why? Because the American president has handed the Russian president a big fat gift: legitimization as full partner of the U. S. in a major international initiative. As Leon Aron summarized it in the Wall Street Journal: “Domestically, this turn of events has bolstered Mr. Putin’s image as someone who not only has unflinchingly confronted the U.S. – still the nation most feared and respected by Russians – but forced it to change its course. Internationally, it has established Mr. Putin as a kind of go-to broker who has scuttled a seemingly imminent military strike by the U. S. Most importantly, from Moscow’s perspective, Mr. Obama’s move has delayed or perhaps eliminated what Russia sees as the worst possible outcome: regime change in a faithful major client in a geostrategically crucial region.”
• The White House should be grieving. Never in a million years would anyone have predicted that from one week to the next Obama would be transformed from a figure of some stature into a something of a weakling – apparently feeling obliged by the situation of his own making into breaking bread with Putin. By entering into negotiation with the Russian autocrat, the U.S. lost ground on each of the following: 1) Though we insist that the possibility of unilateral American military force remains, in order for the Russians to agree even to begin to talk, the Americans took force off the table, leaving whatever the relevant language on the cutting room floor. 2) Obama was never able to persuade either the Congress or the American people that chemical weapons (which so far have killed fewer than 2,000 Syrians) are so much more atrocious than other sorts of weapons (which so far have killed more than 100,000 Syrians). Why, in other words, did he decide to enter into an agreement with the Russians at this time, over this issue, when he failed to do much of anything at earlier points, when so much bloodshed and heartache might have been avoided? 3) Whoever the Syrian rebels are or are not – we know that there are many different factions, some of them extremists, others moderate Syrians still desperate to get rid of their dictator – we just did them in, at least for now. By cozying up to the Kremlin, Assad’s ally, we have turned our backs on any and all Syrians who want nothing so much as for their president to disappear. 4) Given that Putin is our new found friend, various anti-Putin initiatives will suffer. They range from human rights activism to the U.N. as the court of last resort. The Russians have long threatened to veto any American proposal to the Security Council to check Assad. Now, suddenly, they’re amenable to talking about the Syrian problem, but only outside the parameters of the world body. 5) For the time being at least, Assad, who arguably is single-handedly responsible for the misery of millions (two million Syrian refugees alone), can rest easy. His friend, Putin, has morphed into our friend, which provides Assad with protection.

Look, I have no idea how any of this will turn out – just as I had no idea one month ago how in no time flat Putin would whistle and Obama would come. But what I do know is this. For the moment at least, Putin has been elevated and Obama denigrated. Not a pretty picture.